


The Last Temptation of James Fitzjames, or, An Occurrence on King William Island

by hangingfire



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Assisted Suicide, Canonical Character Death, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Historical References, M/M, Near Death, Near Death Experiences, Not A Fix-It, Scurvy, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-20 22:16:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17030979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangingfire/pseuds/hangingfire
Summary: James Fitzjames has lived an outsized, charmed life, with the devil's own luck. That luck, however, has run out at last.





	The Last Temptation of James Fitzjames, or, An Occurrence on King William Island

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



It’s impossible to rest in the sledge. The men try to pull it as smoothly as possible, but they still jolt and stop and start again, and the terrain over which they pull is ragged and unforgiving. James Fitzjames looks up at the blue sky and rubs his shoulder, where another set of scars has opened up.

“Was that from the cheetah?” Francis had said when he’d first noticed it, when he’d helped Bridgens place a dressing on it, and James had laughed, even though it hurt to do so.

“Francis. You’ve deprived me of the chance to tell the story.”

“I would not dream of it. Tell me.”

“My first command. The _Clio_. Climbed the rigging, ate from our hands. One day I suppose … I must have upset it, somehow. Leapt at me and had to be dragged off.”

The story comes out halting, punctuated by small gasps of pain. The sledge lurches over a large rock, and James groans.

“Come now, James,” Francis says, trying and failing to be jovial and to distract him from the pain. “I know you’re a better storyteller than that. Surely there must be some—some twist to the tale, some heroic…”

He’s still talking, but James is fading and when he tries to respond, his body will not obey. He wants to shout with frustration even as unconsciousness falls on him like a curtain.

 

As his body fails, his mind goes free in Time, drifting from memory to memory as if running through the rooms of some fabulous manse. He fades out and he’s ten years old again and the English country summer is eternal, tumbling through the orchard at Rose Hill, his foster brother William Coningham chasing him as they wave sticks at one another and play at battles. And then he’s five, and his nurse is singing to him in Portuguese. He sees himself—imagining, surely—as a squalling infant of one, being baptized in the church of St. Mary-le-Bone: The faces of his father and his father’s wife are vague, scarcely imagined. Sir James Gambier—diplomat, wastrel, embarrassment to the Gambier high-ranking Navy officers—signs his own name as _James Fitzjames_ , occupation _Gentleman_ , and his wife signs—awkwardly— _Ann Fitzjames_.

And then James is twelve—a volunteer, the rank of midshipman and the career of an officer still a dream—stepping on board HMS _Pyramus_ , and though she sways softly in the Portsmouth wind and the deck rocks beneath him, he has never felt so steady on his feet, and he knows he’s come home.

 

They make camp. James is carried from the sledge and laid down in the tent. The best walker in the Royal Navy, the man who’d gone twelve hundred miles with little more than a camel to deliver the India mail when Colonel Chesney’s disastrous Euphrates expedition had fallen flat, unable now to support his own weight.

Francis comes to visit him at night and James manages to look him straight on. “Francis. A word.”

“What is it, James?”

“Close. Come closer. Let me whisper it to you.”

Francis does as he’s asked, bending low, close enough that his breath stirs James’s hair, and before he can duck too far out of reach, James summons all the will he can muster in his failing body, turns his head, and presses his lips to Francis’s. Who starts—but also, to James’s relief, does not pull away until James’s strength gives out—too quickly—and he sinks back against the cot.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, looking up at Francis’s still-startled face. He tries to summon a smile. “Not pleasant, I’m sure. But that was one regret with which I did not wish to die.”

Francis looks away, and James is afraid he’s angry, but when he turns back, his eyes are bright with unshed tears. He smooths his hand over James’s hair. “James,” he says, his voice soft and rough and even more Irish than usual. “Rest now, James.”

James blinks. Had he really done it? Or had he only imagined? He could ask. Decides he’d rather not know. Better to think he’d done it.

 

His vision blurs and now he’s diving into the the fast-running waters of the Mersey—full uniform and expensive watch be damned—grabbing for the coat of a hapless customs official who’s fallen in, thrashing, unable to swim. He’s on the banks of the Euphrates river, trying to use what meagre Arabic he’s acquired to communicate between Colonel Chesney and the local Arab tribesmen, unable to shake the increasing sense of doom hanging over Chesney’s fool’s errand. And then he’s in the rain in Singapore, talking rapidly to a man who’s astonished that the tall Englishman knows Portuguese. George Barrow leans against the wall, hand over a blackening eye. James thrusts a packet of money into the man’s hands. _This will be enough, I’m sure._

When the man goes, James turns on George. _What were you thinking? No more than that he had a handsome figure and a pleasant face? I hope it was worth it._

 _Please don’t tell anyone,_ George says. A hint of a whine in his voice.

_Who should I tell? It would do no one any good. Not you, and certainly not your father._

The invocation of Sir John Barrow is too much, it seems, and George falls on him, openly weeping now. _How can I repay you?_

 _The money,_ James says _, may go to Gledstanes in Regent Street when you are back in London. And you may also put in a good word for me with Sir John._

He’s writing a letter to George’s brother now. _It surely would have been odd had I allowed any son of Sir John Barrow’s to be in a difficulty in such an out of the way place as Singapore while I could help him out of it … As it is I am much obliged by your desire that I should immediately show for the amount which I should do to pacify you if I could remember the exact amount, but I have lost the memo I made of it._ Knowing that all of the Barrows will understand: _George's secret is safe with me_.

And he sees Sir John Barrow reading the letters from his sons, the mixture of anger and relief on his face. Watches as the old man begins to draft the order that will promote James to commander and appoint him to _Clio_ , as if placing him on a rocket to shoot over the heads of his peers.

 _Stop,_ James says, _this will not end well._ But the Second Secretary of the Admiralty will not be deterred, certainly not by a shade from his future that he cannot see.

 

“The hartshorn and camphor is having very little effect, sir.” Bridgens’s voice.

Then he hears Osmer and Reid calling out to him, and it’s May of 1845 and they have spent the day sailing through thick fog. _Will you join us, Fitzjames? We’re drinking a toast._

_To wives and sweethearts!_

He knows the response: _May they never meet!_ Another slip sideways: Elizabeth Coningham, William’s wife, her lips curving into a smile as she turns away. James could have loved her, had they not both loved William so much. He writes to her as _sister_ instead. And then he’s back belowdecks on _Erebus_. He shakes his head at the purser and the ice master.

_I have not the one and no wish for the other, gentlemen. Goodnight._

 

Back in his body, his wretched, aching body that no longer obeys his commands. He labours to breathe.

A man in an old-fashioned frock-coat, visible just out of the tail of his eye. _Father?_ But the shape resolves instead into Bridgens. And someone beside him. Francis. Behind him, a shadow—Robert Coningham, foster-father, dead twelve years now. Reaching out to him. _Come now, James. It’s time._

The wind blows the tent flap and Robert is gone, but James knows he’s right.

There's a thing he has to say, something appalling and frightening and pragmatic in the extreme. He wants to try to make light of it. Fitzjames the joker, the mimic, the prankster, the life of the party, the man who once kicked so high that he’d struck the ceiling beam of HMS _Pique_ ’s lower deck with his foot. He aims for the joke, falls short. “I’m not Christ.”

Francis stares in confusion. No other way to say it, then.

“My—my body. Use it. Feed the men. Francis. God wants you to live. He wants you to live.”

Francis doesn’t say it, but James can see it in his face. Not like that. Please, not like that _._

 

_It’s not like that._

Francis, his expression pugnacious, rebellious even. James standing so close to him that he can see the broken blood vessels in the man’s face. _The devil you say_ , James rages.

 _James. Be easy._ Sir John’s hand on his elbow. Only James’s affection and admiration for Sir John keeps him from simply knocking Francis to the ground.

_You could have signaled. You didn’t. You call it an accident, sir; I call it spite._

_And I tell you, Commander—I was merely following. I thought you had changed plans._

A whole day lost with _Erebus_ and _Terror_ sailing the wrong way, away from Disko Bay, and Captain Francis bloody damn Crozier said nothing. Bitter, spiteful, miserable man—

Then another day, watching the boat shove off for _Terror_.

 _I tell you, one glance from him and I have to remind myself I'm not a fraud._ James is long accustomed to ignoring the nagging sense of being an imposter—he’s had so long to practice simply beating that worry into submission with action, the bigger the better—but somehow Crozier makes it impossible to ignore.

_I’ll not have you speak of him uncharitably, James. He is my second. Now, if something were to happen to me, you would be his second. You should cherish that man._

He thinks: You always saw through me, Francis. You didn’t know that’s what you were doing, but with a glance you plucked out the heart of my mystery and I hated you for it. Sir John was right. I should have loved you for it.

 

“Muscles are in spasm, sir. They've gone rigid.” Bridgens again. James’s vision swims. He half-thinks he can feel his foster-father’s hand in his, and it is cold as marble.

This could go on for hours, he thinks. Days. He’d give anything to be back in that desert now with the India mail. The blistering heat and ferociously dry air were easy compared to this. He needs help. He can’t do this on his own.

“Francis, help me. Help me. Help me out of it.”

”Are you certain, James? Are you certain?”

He would like to say: _I have never been more certain of anything in my uncertain life._

 

Some noise outside. Footfalls on the rocks. Running, faster. James is holding the fuse steady as he waits for the beast to charge.

He’s back in the tent again, and someone is calling for Francis. Saying: you’d better come see this, sir, and Francis goes, and the next thing he knows a doctor he’s never seen before is forcing something down his throat. Now they’re sledging again, but the men are healing and now they’re being led by the Royal Navy crew that miraculously came to their rescue, who also scooped up Hickey’s party and hanged the man at last. If James, still sledge-bound, turns his head one way he can see Dr. Goodsir trudging alongside, and the other way is Francis, who somehow manages to keep pace whilst also holding James’s hand as tight as he can.

Days pass like this and by the time they reach the _Persephone,_ James is finally walking again, though Francis insists on sticking close to his side to support him if—when—he stumbles. Then the voyage home to England, where William and Elizabeth are waiting to greet him as soon as he steps off the ship, exclaiming over his thinness, and he can’t quite take Elizabeth’s pitying gaze.

But he goes to stay with them and the children, and Francis comes too, and he and Francis stand side by side as the Admiralty makes its inquiries, and finally when it’s all over, there comes the ball in honour of the men of _Erebus_ and _Terror_ , and when he realises that Francis has disappeared halfway through, James slips out to find him.

He finds Francis in a garden, in the shadow of a tree, alone.

“It’s intolerable,” Francis says.

“I know.”

“I don’t know how you can stand it.”

“What can I say, Francis? I have a lifetime of disguises behind me. That of the returning hero is but one more. But I know it doesn’t suit you.”

“Is that why you came to find me? To pity me?”

“Not at all.” He reaches out, puts a hand on Francis’s shoulder just above the epaulet, then moves to brush his fingers across Francis’s cheek.

“James—”

“Tell me to go and I shall.”

A silence, then: “Don’t go.”

And suddenly they’re in one another’s arms, the medals and buttons and hardware of their uniforms comically and uselessly clashing, and James presses his lips to—

 

“Leave us, Mr. Bridgens.”

An imagined lifetime passing in an eyeblink, a future that will never happen, as swiftly gone and as fleeting as the memories of that which did happen. James has never been a man to weep, not even in private, but he can feel tears running across his temples. He would sob if he could.

“Sir. If I may. Use this. His reflexes will try to spit it out. You'll have to help it down. Like this.” He can hear the emotion thickening Bridgens’s voice. “It was an honour serving you, sir. You're a good man. There will be poems.“

Better ones than mine, I hope, James thinks. And in Portsmouth he is declaiming part of a canto from that epic poem he published in the _Nautical Magazine_ ; his friend Charlewood is laughing, Le Vesconte is visibly raising his eyes to Heaven—by now, in _Clio_ ’s journey all the way back from China, he has heard this more times than he cares to remember.

> _Each man who is shot of course down he goes,_  
>  _And the light of his match makes a blaze of his clothes._  
>  _One can see at a glance all the wounded and killed,_  
>  _By the smoke which curls up from the grilling and grilled._  
>  _A Chinese field of battle is terrible work,_  
>  _And oh! such a horrible smell of roast pork!_  
> 

_William knew it was you_ , Elizabeth says, waving the magazine in his face, in the parlour of the Coningham house in Brighton. _“Tom Bowline”, for pity’s sake. You have a flair for the gruesome, Mr. Fitzjames._

_And for verse?_

_It is good that you are an excellent officer, Mr. Fitzjames._

 

The tent flap closes and suddenly—at last—James’s mind goes quiet. There is only Francis and the bottle. He would like to say something: Thank you. I forgive you. I’m sorry. But his tongue will not move.

The bitter liquid slips into his mouth and Francis’s fingers go to work on his throat. No lover could be more gentle. At least the last human touch he will feel in this lifetime is a tender one.

As the light fades, they gather: the shades of Robert Coningham, of James Gambier, of John Franklin and Graham Gore and Stephen Stanley and Alexander MacDonald and every poor man who burned in the Carnivale tent, and as one they lift James Fitzjames from his mortal shell and bear him away.

**Author's Note:**

> Commander James Fitzjames had a truly remarkable life of which _The Terror_ barely scraped the surface, and so I thought I might bring some of that into the scene that broke many a _Terror_ fan's heart.
> 
> I am enormously indebted to the late William Battersby's definitive biography, _James Fitzjames: The Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition_. It's Battersby we have to thank for the added richness of TV Fitzjames, including the story of his illegitimate birth, the Chinese sniper story, and Birdshit Island, and I've plundered his book freely for the historical detail I've incorporated here. It also supplied the text of the letter that Fitzjames wrote to Sir John Barrow's son, John, after he bailed George out of his mystery scandal. I am also grateful to the [HathiTrust archives of _The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle_](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007561470), which enabled me to find Fitzjames's own writings (from which the Osmer and Reid scene is drawn), and all 9 (!) _very long_ cantos of Fitzjames's inimitable opus _The Voyage of HMS Cornwallis_. ( _So many rhyming couplets_ , and yes, those unfortunate six lines quoted are really part of it.)
> 
> Post-reveal edit: You'll find a sort of chaser for this [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17075927). The stories aren't explicitly linked, but you are welcome to think of them as such.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta readers for their feedback and support, and thanks to my family and friends patiently tolerating my obsession these last seven months with all things Franklin, British, polar, and disastrous. Thanks to my recipient for their request, which I very much enjoyed filling. And of course, the greatest respect to the real James Fitzjames. Rest in peace, sir, wherever you lie.


End file.
